We Do The Walk Of Life
After worrying about the prospect of my world shrinking due to the mysterious increase in back aches and pains especially when out for a walk, something reality only continued to reinforce, the story then got weirder this past weekend.
My plan for Sunday was informed entirely by the fact that I’d gotten a bug up my ass about starting a pair of Amazon returns right away, and apparently the only UPS Store open in all of Portland on Sundays is the one at Portland State University—for which, at least, my thanks go out to the shipping and receiving demands of college students.
This, then, is how I ended up taking a 55-minute bus ride out of St. Johns and into downtown just to get this done. It’s worth noting that this ride also was my first undistracted listen to Formentera II.
What’s peculiar is that after dropping off those returns (the store literally is right there at the bus stop), I then proceeded to walk clear across downtown Portland without nay part of my back complaining even just the once.
You don’t have to take my word for it, as it turned into an accidental photowalk stretching from PSU, down 6th Avenue, to the Apple Store so I could check out the periscope camera on the iPhone 15 Pro Max for myself, over to Pioneer Courthouse Square, then meandered my way up to the Stumptown Coffee Roasters at Ace Hotel, where I revisited the worst bathroom for sensory processing.
From there I headed back east to catch the bus back to St. Johns from outside Big Pink. All of this, again, with not a single backache.
I’m left to ask why, then, when I went on my evening walk tonight, the backache began within blocks and I had to pull back from the walk that had started at what I call my “middling” pace and instead continue as a leisurely stroll.
As I said in my last post, I’ve an appointment on the books with my new primary care physician to get into all of this, but the weekend’s glaring inconsistency is maddening. I’ve certainly not yet thought through the implications of not even being able to predict what will and what will not trigger these aches and pains.